Wise Leadership Consulting partners with school districts, foundations, and individual leaders to strengthen the systems, practices, and people that move schools forward. Below is a snapshot of current engagements and the scholarship emerging from our practice.
Current Engagements
The Malott Educator Fellowship
Wise Leadership Consulting provides lead facilitation and coaching for the Malott Educator Fellowship, a two year principal development program serving 25 Chicago principals. The fellowship is offered in partnership with the Chicago Public Education Fund and UIC’s Center for Urban Education Leadership, and is designed to strengthen instructional leadership, school culture, and adaptive leadership capacity across priority schools.
Barton Elementary School, Chicago Public Schools
The Turnaround Intensive: Leading Systems that Transform Outcomes. A multi-phase consulting engagement supporting the Barton leadership team in building strategic systems for the year ahead. The work moves through four phases, Notice, Name, Interrupt, and Rebuild, and focuses on instructional alignment, attendance and discipline systems, coaching infrastructure, and adaptive leadership. Led by Aquabah Gonney-Buckner.
Chicago Public Schools, Networks 4 and 11
Monthly professional development for network leadership across two Chicago Public Schools networks. The work supports network chiefs and principal supervisors in deepening instructional coherence, culturally responsive practice, and the leadership moves that sustain school improvement.
Scholarship and Publications
Three Bridges
Philanthropy, University, and Practice in a Two-Year Coaching Model for Chicago’s Priority-School Principals
Paper proposal submitted to the 2026 University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA) Annual Convention. Co-authored by Dr. Peggie Burnett-Wise, Dr. Nia Abdullah, Dr. Stephen McClain, and Valencia Koker. The paper presents the Malott Educator Fellowship as a case study in cross-institutional partnership for principal development, drawing on the work of Bryk and Schneider on relational trust, Wenger on communities of practice, and Khalifa on culturally responsive school leadership. A companion empirical study is under Institutional Review Board review at a partner university.
Roosevelt University Faculty Research and Professional Development Grant
Summer 2026
Awarded to Dr. Peggie Burnett-Wise to support research on AI authorship, equity, and culturally responsive innovation in instructional leadership.
Keep Everyday Expectations High
National Association of Elementary School Principals, 2026
Co-authored by Wise Leadership Consulting coach Dr. Nia Abdullah and published by the National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP). Read the article.
Bring This Work to Your District
If you lead a district, university, foundation, or school looking to deepen leadership development and equity-centered practice, we would love to talk.